So an insolent philosophy asked: ‘Why would we need another cosmic expansion mechanism?’ Especially one expansion mechanism NOT directly observed, a figment of the imagination, the so-called Inflaton Field, necessary to make the Big Bang theory work (because of arcane complications: basically the universe as observed is around 100 billion light years across, and can have got that big only if it expanded at 10^10 times the speed of light, or something like this… Confusing enough? I have explained what is going on here and there, such as the locality of the speed of light, and the embedding theorem of Lorentzian manifolds. Stay tuned…)

A (Non Spectacular) Starburst galaxy, the Cigar, 12 million light year away. Full starburst galaxies are very blue, from the giant extremely hot (thus blue) stars in their midst. How much do we know about Helium formation in such super giant stars? Philosophers want to know!

So why is the Big Bang necessary? Besides making some people more puffed up than god itself?

Inspired by the H bombs they were thoroughly familiar with, Gamow, Alpher and Herman proposed the hot Big Bang as a means to produce all of the elements: extreme heat caused collisions and the nuclei fused (from the “STRONG FORCE”).

The lightest elements (hydrogen, helium, deuterium, lithium) were produced in the Big Bang nucleosynthesis

Ms. Burbidge, Mr. Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle worked out the nucleosynthesis processes that go on in stars, where the much greater density and longer time scales allow the triple-alpha process (He+He+He –>> C) to proceed and make the elements heavier than helium.

But BBFH could not produce enough helium. The solution, which Hoyle didn’t like at all, was to make the Helium in the Big Bang. Now we think we know that both processes occur: most helium is produced in the Big Bang but carbon and everything heavier is produced in stars. Most lithium and beryllium is produced by cosmic ray collisions breaking up some of the carbon produced in stars.

In a pirouette, Helium abundance is now viewed the observation which makes the Big Bang necessary… Yet, all this rests on an ironclad understanding of stellar physics… which we assume we have, although we don’t.

Astronomers at the gigantic, high altitude Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile investigated intense bouts of star formation in four distant, gas-rich starburst galaxies, where new stars are formed 100 or more times faster than they are in the Milky Way.

By looking at isotopes ratio in Inter Stellar Medium (ISM) Carbon Monoxide CO, one can see if it has been generated in light, or heavy stars. To quote from the original article in Nature: “

“Oxygen, carbon and their stable isotopes are produced solely by nucleosynthesis in stars. The minor isotopes, 13C and 18O, are released mainly by low- and intermediate-mass stars (those with stellar mass less than eight solar masses, M* < 8M⊙) and massive stars (M* > 8M⊙), respectively, owing to their differing energy barriers in nuclear reactions and evolution of stars. These isotopes then mix with the interstellar medium (ISM) such that the 13C/18O abundance ratio measured in the ISM becomes a ‘fossil’, imprinted by evolutionary history and the stellar initial mass function (IMF). The abundances of the 13CO and C18O isotopologues in the molecular ISM, whose measurements are immune to the pernicious effects of dust, are therefore a very sensitive index of the IMF in galaxies.”

This doesn’t prove my ideas about the universe are right. Yet the article mention star formation rates have to be lowered by a factor of… seven. (I will resist multiplying 13.8 billions by 7, which is… not making this up, very close to 98 billions…)

This doesn’t prove my ideas about the universe are right… But it goes my way… Ok, let a professional concludes:

“Our findings lead us to question our understanding of cosmic history,” Rob Ivison, co-author of the study and director for science at European Southern Observatory, said in the statement. “Astronomers building models of the universe must now go back to the drawing board, with yet more sophistication required.“

Moods, in science cannot change until evidence contrary to the old visions one had of things, accumulate. Before that, a change of paradigm can’t be hoped for. Long ago, when I used to be all too human, I communicated with a director at ESO. Delighted by the change of tone, not to say mood… (Another guy I knew was so arrogant that he posited one was not really a scientist until one was the director of a lab, which he happened to be… in astrophysics, the field at hand, where it turns out the big picture was missed…)

But, ladies and gentlemen, remember this: wisdom, even scientific wisdom, doesn’t always triumph in a timely manner. We have examples in science, and mathematics, where wisdom was delayed and defeated for 24 centuries… by the greatest stupidity

b) The Archimedean Axiom in arithmetic/theory of infinity, undetected until 1950, when the US logician/mathematician Robinson detected it.

c) Non-Euclidean geometry found 24 centuries ago, and then lost until 1830 CE…

d) Biological evolution theory, lost between Anaximander and Lamarck… Although practiced by all serious breeders (especially Greek).

e) Computers, lost for 17 centuries… we have one proof the Antikyra mechanism (and various written description) until Blaise Pascal… Hence the computer language “Pascal”

f) Heliocentric theory of Aristarchus of Samos lost between Archimedes and Buridan (and buried again by Catholicism) Heliocentrism was of course obvious, except if one is a caveman, and not to observant…

g) And of course that Earth was round and how big, established and measured first by the great scientist and explorer Pytheas of Massalia (Pytheas de Marseilles), circa 320 BCE. Pytheas even related the tides to the Moon, and got the explanation roughly right (whereas Galileo Galilei, 19 centuries later, got the explanation of the tides completely wrong, and not just that but got a near lethal fight with his friend the Pope, who he brushed off as an ignorant… when the Pope was actually less wrong than Galileo…)